Jessica Berry Responds: Nietzsche’s “Warlike Man”

"In times of peace, the warlike man attacks himself."
Can you explain the context of this reference and where it comes from, please?

A quick web search reveals that this is an often quoted aphorism, especially in the context of martial arts, where it's meant to be inspirational for one's training. This struck me as probably not what Nietzsche had in mind, and I sent this to our favorite Nietzsche scholar Jessica Berry, who answered:

That, of course, makes its "context" a difficult issue, since Part IV of BGE is just the "Epigrams and Interludes" chapter, made up largely of several dozen one-liners, not obviously related or continuous in theme.

It's important to note, though, from the standpoint of the question you seem to have received about it, that this quote isn't an evaluation — it's just a psychological observation. I see no praise or blame of anyone here. Rather, just the observation that human beings are feisty little critters, consistent with Nietzsche's claim in the Genealogy that human beings naturally delight in cruelty (which is also meant to be a value-neutral statement). This quote does suggest that not all of us might be "warlike," but it seems to me to give us no way of assessing whether being "warlike" would be a good thing or a bad thing.

Thus, I take this claim to be just the (fairly uncontroversial one) that, if everything were perfect, we'd cause trouble just to (i) avoid boredom, or (ii) maximize our opportunities for expressing and feeling power, or (iii) some such. Schopenhauer makes a similar point in "On the Suffering of the World." But Nietzsche here also implies that if there were no other way for one to vent one's cruelty, no one else upon whom to vent it, one would attack oneself (in the manner of religious ascetics). So this observation also belongs importantly to his explanation of how ascetic moralities get started.

Comments

there is also the fact/phenomena that we have/are conflicted interests as anyone who has tried to diet will note or who has been to a town-hall meeting, not sure that this is so much about cruelty (tho obviously there are moments/tendencies) as it is about acting will-fully in the world as it is, and not some utopian denial of life

perhaps, or you could read him as saying that if we the huddled-masses could ever kick our addiction to, striving for, the unearthly/anti-life/reality-denying
idea(l) of “if everything were perfect” than we would cause less tragic forms of trouble and perhaps even learn to say yes to gay (even queer) forms of testing/troubling…

Freud (who developed many core concepts of Nietzsche’s) developed the concepts of life-drive (Eros) such as the drives for survival, propagation, hunger, sex, etc, and of death-drive (Thanatos), beyond the pleasure principle, which turns desire to increase pleasure and decrease pain into taking pleasure in pain itself (his explanation for the repetition compulsion).

Zizek elaborates Freud via Lacan in Parallax View :
“we should bear in mind the basic anti-Darwinian lesson of psychoanalysis repeatedly emphasized by Lacan: man’s radical and fundamental dis-adaptation, mal-adaptation, to his environs.At its most radical, “beinghuman” consists in an “uncoupling” from immersion in one’s environs, in following a certain automatism which ignores the demands of adaptation—this is what the “death drive” ultimately amounts to. Psychoanalysis is not “deterministic” (“What I do is determined by unconscious processes”): the “death drive” as a self-sabotaging structure represents the minimum of freedom, of a behavior uncoupled from the utilitarian survivalist attitude.The “death drive” means that the organism is no longer fully determined by its environs, that it “explodes/implodes” into a cycle of autonomous behavior. That is the crucial gap: between utilitarianism as the radical “ontic” denial of freedom (those who control the conditions which determine my behavior control me) and the Kantian (and, let us not forget, Sadeian) assertion of unconditional autonomy (of the moral law, of the caprice to enjoy)—in both cases, there is a rupture in the chain of being.” (p. 231)

When Nietzsche talks of the “blond beast,” for example he raises the issue of human instincts: are they life instincts or death instincts and how do they function? The concept of bad conscience becomes the superego for Freud, and id is a further development of blond beastiality. In Nietzsche are concepts of the unconscious mind, adaptive repression (sublimation), and maladapative repression (projection), dreams as “illusions of illusions, ” all reflections of Freud being influenced by Nietzsche, despite Freud’s repeated denials (though his personal correspondence later published reveal quotations and paraphrases of him.

Might I suggest that what Nietsche had in mind was the lack of any place/occupation for the ‘warlike man’ in times of peace. One of the difficulties experienced by returning soldiers, trained to kill and fresh from combat, is reintegration into peaceful society. They have no fuction in a society at peace; more than that, any ‘warlike ‘ behaviour is abhorrent to ordinary citizens. Thus, in the face of rejection, the ‘warlike man’ is left to battle with his isolation, his inclinations and his memories.

Point: you will find that you attack yourself, get very self-critical and angry at your own mistakes and missed opportunities. This is not because you are doing anything wrong. It is your strong qualities finding something to do. Give them another and better task – go to war in some way (though not literally, of course).

I think that your take may be overly focused on the word “war”. If we consider replacing it with the connotations of struggle, a broader interpretation is opened. War, conflict and struggle are all affirmative actions, generally initiated towards accomplishing an objective. A military invasion is one example, the struggle for civil rights or justice is another. It is easy to interpret the “warlike person” as being violent or dangerous, largely because of the loaded connotation of the term war. Humans were for a time non-verbal animals, humans held other humans as property, humans and have still do live in groups where the accident of birth affects outcomes. Never has any progress been made without the agitation or provocation of “warlike” people.

So, the “warlike” person, who is oriented towards conflict, may not be oriented towards conflict for the sake of conflict, but rather oriented from a perspective that things can be better and more fair, and it is that person’s responsibility (not because of their uniqueness, but a sense that it is every person’s responsibility) to devote their efforts towards those ends.

To consider the inverse. Who looks at the world today and determines that there is nothing that needs doing? The language of the phrase leads us towards thinking it is the people ordering physical and military action that are the “warlike” people, but are not those who actively oppose those things also warlike and combative.

Was Ghandi less warlike than Hitler? Ghandi struggled, fought and combatted. He was perhaps warlike. Found things not to be acceptable, and struggled to change them. If he were instead born into a stable and just society, where no struggle called to his sense of morality, would he happily have baked bread or built bicycles, or might his warlike nature, through lack of a known external object, found an internal object. War is an attempt to change things, to engage in war is to take risks in order to accomplish something. If one assumes that the statement refers to conventional violent aggressive physical warfare, one limits the potential meaning.

Consider paraphrasing as: the person who feels a responsibility to improve things, when not having a clear simple or easy opportunity to do so, cannot accept the idea that they are unable to improve things, because if they cannot make a positive impact, then are they just not wasting oxygen? There is injustice in the world. Probably less than before, but who is the non-warlike person, who feels no urge to struggle towards increased justice? That person is likely to be considered optimal by entrenched power structures, but through any other lens? Is there a distinction between being “un-war-like” and apathy or complicity? Isn’t it possible that the warlike person is not warlike because of a desire to engage in destruction and harm, but rather motivated by a sense of obligation to expend their talent and energy towards positive improvement despite the fact that doing so brings risks.

Such a person may struggle to express their willingness to struggle for justice. In many places they can vote, in many places they can speak, in most of those places there are entrenched power structures that make it difficult for an individual to have a non-statistical influence. Not so likely to bother those unburdened by an expectation of justness. But for those who are, if they are “warlike” but impotent to address X,Y, or Z political injustices, their choice is either that they themselves are lacking, or that the world itself is, and the latter may be scarier or harder to accept.

What is self-immolation if not the warlike person attacking themself? Perhaps not because of some uncontrollable violent impulse, but rather because of an uncontrollable sense of duty and obligation coupled with inability.

There has been immeasurable harm caused by warlike people. But has there been a shred of good brought about by non warlike people?

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